2. Grateful for a good return from trip to NYC
Trip to NYC via Air Tran went very well. We were actually ahead of schedule going to LaGuardia. Trip back did not go as well. There were weather delays plus delays due to a windshield wiper and refueling.
Here are some ideas for newsletter articles
Looking for scholarship judges
If you are interested in helping our community pick a scholarship winner for our latest scholarship, please let Sarah Burke (sarahwilsonburke@hotmail.com) or Jeanette Evans (jeanette.evans@sbcglobal.net) know.
Last year we picked our winner based on the input of a 4-member group of judges. We used a consensus-style forum, conducted over a telephone conference call.
The judging involves a few hours of work in April, 2009. Judges look at the scholarship applications and then discuss with the other judges their observations. Last year we looked at several items - among them - the ability of the applicant to contribute in the future to the profession.
We are hoping this year to attract applicants on a level of what we had last year. The judging last year was a great challenge as our applicant pool was truly outstanding. Watch neostc.org for details of our scholarship including the scholarship application. Some dates to note are -
Feb. 1 - official launch of scholarship
Apr. 1 - submission deadline
May. 1 - winner announced
http://neostc.org/scholarship/
A new font in the new year
Starting in 2009, drivers in NE Ohio will see a new typeface on NE Ohio signs as part of construction projects on Interstates 71, 90, 480, and 490.
The changes includes taller lower case letters and more space inside a's and e's. You can read the new signs from father away according to usability testing.
The Federal Highway Administrationg recently approved use of the new type face called Clearview to improve readability 20% over traditional highway lettering. So says Don Meeker, the environmental graphic designer responsible for the change.
Created in 1949, the never previously-tested formerly-used Highway Gothic typeface in one recent test broke up for viewers at a distance of about 500 feet. You can see signs in Clearview for an additional 250 feet. This is according to a test done at Penn State.
For more information, please see http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/stories/index.ssf?/base/news/1223886755189741.xml&coll=2.
http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/stories/index.ssf?/base/news/1223886755189741.xml&coll=2
2008 word of the year
A previous edition of Line and Letters listed some of Merriam-Webster's new entries for 2008 per the print update of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, available in bookstores on September 1, 2008. Malware, netroots, subprime, and webinar made the list.
Now it is time - for me at least - to think about the choices for word or words of the year for 2008 and reflect back.
The American Dialect Society includes linguists, grammarians, historians, and scholars. The society began choosing words of the year in 1990 for fun, not in an official capacity to induct words into the English language. The society recently chose at its annual convention the 2008 word of the year. The word is subprime.
About 80 members of the organization spent two days at their annual conference debating the merits of runners-up the included Facebook, green, and waterboarding.
The vote finally went to the adjective that means "a risky or less than ideal loan, mortgage or investment."
Wayne Glowka, a spokesman for the society and a dean at Reinhardt College in Waleska, Ga. considers subprime an odd word - at least as far as linguists are concerned (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22514839/).
The prefix "sub" translates roughly to "below the standard," while "prime" means something close to "the best."
"People were saying that students were referring to their tests, `I'm going to subprime this; I'm going to mess it up,'" he said.
Around STC
The December, 2008 edition of Intercom included Moving Toward a Content Reuse Strategy, Slowly and Carefully - written by NEO STC members Julianne Forsythe and Jeanette Evans. The article describes experiences at Rockwell Automation. Intercom calls the article a detailed study outlining the benefits of topic-based authoring, content reuse, and content management strategies to more fully leverage technical content as a business asset.
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